The Video Game Revue

Wii Day

I picked up my Wii at EB Games this morning. I showed up shortly before 9 am expecting the store to open at 10 am, and I quickly discovered that it doesn't actually open until 11 am on Sundays. Fortunately, the store manager is quite cool, and he even knew that a guy was waiting there overnight to get a Wii, so the shop opened a half hour early.

People with and without preorders were lined up in separate lines and were served alternating between these two lines. Only about six or seven of the preorder people showed up before the store opened, and there were actually more than twenty non-preorder people, so some of them were turned away. Anyone who was there before ten got a Wii, however.

I spent some time in line playing Nintendo DS games multiplayer with another guy who I recognized from the line-up for preorders. He had Metroid Prime: Hunters and Mario Kart on him, and I had Tetris DS, so we played some of each of those. I'd never played Metroid Prime: Hunters before (I know, shame on me) and I was really impressed by the control scheme; it's definitely not bad at all for a handheld FPS. The time went by pretty quickly, except maybe the last 15 minutes or so during which I got so excited that I could literally only stand and stare into the store window dreaming about Wii games.

One thing that threw me for a bit of a loop was the PS3 "trash talk" that went on. There were a handful of fans in line who felt that putting down the PS3 somehow made them bigger Nintendo fans. Most of it was in good fun, however--that stuff was merely kidding around and making crude jokes. Anything that wasn't completely tongue in cheek was obviously no more than sour grapes.

Zelda: Twilight Princess is in short supply, and thankfully I preordered one early enough to get it--nobody who didn't preorder Zelda got a copy. I nearly cracked and bought Call of Duty 3 since the control scheme sounds neat, but honestly, I really don't like console FPS games, and CoD3 doesn't sound all that great. Red Steel is another game that is unavailable so far due to the shipments not making it out in time or some such. I'll probably pick up one or two more Wii games later this week, with likely candidates including Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and Metal Slug Anthology. The pickings are sorta slim.

But I suspected that Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wii Sports would be enough to keep me glued to the Wii for now, and I was right. I did also get one of those Wii point card things and downloaded the original Legend of Zelda for NES. I do already have a working cartridge of it, and I'm not above playing it on an emulator given that I legally own it, but I really just wanted to try playing it on the Wii. The experience is seamless; my only real hang-up there is that I really wish the games were cheaper. $5 for a NES ROM is pretty steep--particularly for ones like Donkey Kong.

As for Wii Sports, I love it. It's not enough on its own to make the console worth buying, but as a fun game that makes novel use of the wiimote, it's fantastic. I'm particularly enamoured with the boxing game, although the bowling and golf games also seem especially strong at this point.

I'd say more about Twilight Princess but I'm still sorta taking it in. I'm planning to sink some heavy time into that one--likely at the expense of Final Fantasy XII, but I left that one off in a pretty good spot and I'm not going to abandon it for long. I just need to get really far in Twilight Princess first.

Anyway, I've been playing Wii games all afternoon and I'm going to be playing them all evening (although a break for Guitar Hero is remotely possible.) The versatility of the Wii, from what I've seen so far, is absolutely incredible, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what directions developers will take with it. Even with the relatively scant launch-time offerings available for it at present, the potential of the Wii to provide an all-encompasing game platform with enticing offerings for all sorts of gamers is obvious.

I was also very pleased to find that the backward compatibility with GameCube is, so far, faultless. There are two memory card slots and four joystick ports hidden in the top of the Wii (when it's standing upright) for GameCube peripherals, so I can pack away the ol' cube and still have my current game library (including Resident Evil 4, Ikaruga, Pikmen 2, and Pac-Man Vs.) at my fingertips. Not that I have time for those games right now.

The playing schedule for the next week is largely going to consist of Wii, more Wii, Guitar Hero, Final Fantasy XII, and, if there's time, World of WarCraft and F.E.A.R. There may also be the occasional round of Counter-Strike or Company of Heroes if Matt is available. I want to replay F.E.A.R. now that I have a new PC, and soon I'll be replaying Half-Life 2 for the third time as well. That is, assuming that I don't get hopelessly caught up in other games.

And now, back to the Wii.

posted by Parappa @ 5:26 PM